Study abroad creates scenes of discovery

College students share cultural adventures through photo, video, and essay contests

Suspended in Time

Freddy Tsao, who studied abroad in Paris, won best portfolio, including this picture from Cinque Terre, Italy.

Photo by third-year Freddy Tsao (Paris)

A Late Night in Arusha, Tanzania

A traffic jam in Arusha, one of Tanzania’s most developed cities. The scene shows the intersection of rural and urban, created by the city’s proximity to several large national tourist parks, such as the Serengeti. This photo took first place in UChicago’s study abroad photo contest.

Photo by fourth-year Sydney Combs (Tanzania study abroad)

Hilltop industrial complex, Ottakring, Vienna, Austria

(Second-place photo contest winner)

Photo by fourth-year Dylan West (Vienna)

Teatime, Ozdere, Turkey

(Third-place photo contest winner)

Photo by fourth-year Varsha Sundar (Istanbul)

Girls playing in an air vent in Milan for Carnival

(From Barcelona, Spain)

Photo by fourth-year Eliza Betteridge (Barcelona)

Girl and her Goat

Sydney Combs took these photographs while conducting anthropological research with the pastoral Maasai tribe of Tanzania. Maasai children often start herding and milking their father’s livestock at a young age, Combs says.

Photo by fourth-year Sydney Combs (Tanzania)

Herding

Photo by fourth-year Sydney Combs (Tanzania)

Time for a Paddle

Photo by third-year Freddy Tsao (Paris)

A guard at the Golden Temple, Amritsa

Photo by third-year Leah Rachel von Essen (Pune)

Breaking the Ice

Photo by fourth-year Constance Delannoy (Argentina)

Boatman on the Backwaters, Cochin, Kerala

Photo by third-year Emily Brown (Pune)

Busy Subway Station on a Smoggy Day

Photo by fourth-year Miranda Cherkas (Beijing)

Class in the Amphitheatre, Ephesus, Turkey

Photo by fourth-year Varsha Sundar (Istanbul)

Handwashing

At Meiji Shrine in Tokyo

Photo by fourth-year Michael Chen (Beijing)

Stories

From Oslo, Norway

Photo by fourth-year Amy Harlowe (London)

El Mercado

Photo by third-year Adaline Torres (Oaxaca)

Outside Park Guell

From Barcelona, Spain

Photo by fourth-year Jesse Handler (Vienna)

By Dianna DouglasHomepage photo by third-year Freddy Tsao

“
I had so many wild adventures and met so many kind people that I can’t wait to go back.”
—Sydney CombsFourth-year in College

Every year the Study Abroad office collects hundreds of photos, videos, and essays from students in the College, looking for scenes that capture the awe, delight, romance, discovery, and challenges of living abroad. This is a small selection of this year’s winning entries.

Currently 40 percent of students in the College study abroad. They travel to UChicago centers in Paris and Beijing, to partner universities in far-flung places like Chile and South Korea, to Civilization programs with faculty around the world, and to undertake intensive foreign-language study programs or original research projects. For many, it is a transformative experience.

“The students who study language, history, and culture in foreign lands are embracing a kind of intellectually rigorous globalism that will surely be a hallmark of the new liberal education of our century,” says John W. Boyer, dean of the College.

Sydney Combs, a fourth-year anthropology student, traveled to Tanzania in 2013 for field research with the Maasai tribe, and brought back photos and videos that show the clash of the rural and urban, and developed and underdeveloped areas where she worked. Combs won first place in this year’s photo and video contests.

“Studying abroad in Tanzania gave me the chance to finally put my language and cultural studies to good use, and solidified my love for fieldwork and anthropology,” she says.

Like many students who study abroad, Combs plans to continue working and researching outside the borders of United States. “I had so many wild adventures and met so many kind people that I can’t wait to go back.”

Originally published on July 7, 2014.

Video

Study Abroad in 60 Seconds: "Good Life" (Tanzania)

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Le3T3Ko44A

Video by fourth-year Sydney Combs

Study Abroad writing contest winner

Fear and Traveling, by P.M. Goodrich, AB'14On traveling to the Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen to visit the final resting place of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
In early August of last year, when it simmered all muggy and stale and nostalgic in the United States, and I felt tepid sitting uselessly around my parents’ house—eating leftovers, hogging Netflix, swimming slow laps in the community pool by breaststroke at lunchtime—I left the country by airplane and flew for twelve hours to Copenhagen, a place where I knew no one, spoke no words of the language, and would be alone for longer than I had ever been before. While the trip was premeditated, I had few plans ahead of me as to what I would do, and really had only one goal in mind, which was to discover the life of a man who died before our nation fought a civil war.